And the winner is …

While the votes have yet to be counted to find out which businesses and service providers will be named the Best of La Jolla, 10 residents who cast their ballots online received word recently that they will receive prizes for participating.

Michele Ellingsen, Dixie Reynolds, Quinn Quackenbush and Oliver Jones won two tickets each to “Memphis” at the La Jolla Playhouse. Carlton O’Neal received dinner for two at George’s at the Cove, and Thor Riordon, a dinner at Sammy’s Woodfired Pizza.

Also, Barbara Slavin won a dinner at Roppongi while John Addey got dinner for two to Osteria Romantica. Bev Grant and Sandy Paslawsky each received a $100 gift certificate to Spa MD.

They were among the hundreds of people who voted in La Jolla’s oldest and most prestigious listings of the people’s choices for the finest in La Jolla businesses and services. Results will be announced in the Oct. 2 edition of The Light.

Although those in attendance at the new Safe, Healthy Neighborhoods Initiative (SHNI) meeting Sept. 4 in the La Jolla Library were seeking local solutions to the homelessness they’ve observed in their neighborhoods, they were met instead with broader City- and County-wide resources that address the varied facets of this very complex issue.

Sitting at the Brick & Bell coffee shop in La Jolla Shores on Sept. 4 with local residents Sandra Munson and Tim Johnson as they catch up over iced teas, one would never know that just three weeks prior, the two were undergoing surgery so Munson could donate a kidney to Johnson.